What European election campaign?

Europe rarely features highly in European election campaigns in Britain. In the 2004 campaign the word Euro more often than not referred to a football tournament rather than the single currency. And for at least two reasons, we shouldn’t expect European integration to be much discussed.

First, parties have little incentive to campaign on Europe because it features a long way down the list of issues British voters consider important, well behind Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s leadership, expenses, the economy, immigration and crime. Second, to the extent that parties are internally divided on the question of how far Europe should go, they are less likely to push the issue up the agenda.

In the current campaign we might have expected what little talk there was about Europe to cover the Lisbon Treaty on which the Conservatives, in contrast to the two other main parties, have called for a referendum, and the question of whether Britain should remain a member of the EU amid calls from Eurosceptic parties on the right and left, for us to withdraw from the organisation.

While Lisbon and EU membership have been mentioned, the reality is that discussion of Europe seems to have featured even less than the low level we might have predicted. Such is the domination of the campaign by the issue of MPs’ allowances that most of the main parties’ European Election Broadcasts – a place where they have the opportunity to talk specifically about European issues – made little or no mention of Europe.

Perhaps the paucity of talk about European integration would matter little if there was nothing at stake. But, like it or not, the European Parliament’s (EP) legislative powers have greatly increased over recent years such that it is now heavily involved in the regulation of the EU’s single market.

The balance of power in the EP matters between those favouring greater control of markets and those preferring deregulation. The outcome of the EP elections will also have an effect on the choice of European Commission President, who will have to be approved by the Parliament before taking office.

The polls suggest that the big parties are likely to suffer on June 4th with minor parties doing much better than they would in general elections. Small parties doing well at EP elections is nothing new. UKIP came third last time around winning 12 seats and 16 percent of the vote.

Governing parties normally do badly at European elections but if Labour were to drop below 22 percent they would beat their own record for the lowest score by a governing party in a European election in Britain. Many of the smaller parties take an anti-EU stance, especially those likely to win seats in the election (UKIP and possibly the BNP).

So if we look simply at the results this time around, the expected victory for the Conservatives and the votes for small parties may send a largely Eurosceptic message from the UK to Brussels.

This is fine, if that’s how the electorate feels, and we have plenty of polling evidence that the British electorate is comparatively Eurosceptic. But crucially, for many voters the decision will have been made not on issues of European integration and EU membership, but on the question of MPs’ expenses.

Looking at the election leaflets in my recycling sack, one could also argue that the local council elections will be decided not on the issue of litter on our local footpaths (one mention by one party), but on MP’s expenses (multiple mentions by all parties).

That seems even more depressing. Especially if all of this is what the Daily Telegraph intended.

The Euro elections are the only elections where the electorate are offered an approximately representative choice of candidates (even though there are no eco-socialist or eco-syndicalist candidates on offer in Britain). Politics is inherently dishonest because candidates at Westminster must first offer false promise to all shades of public opinion to gain office. Then they must appease and act as apologists for the permanent US/UK oily-military-industrial state and security spooks, the right-wing media and the permanent corporate state, to remain in office. In the European, Westminster and local Council arrangements the important decisions are not taken in real consultations with democratically elected representatives, anyway. I guess our MPs must think that, since they do not represent us and they do not hold the executive to account and they cannot influence policy in any meaningful way, they may as well fiddle their expenses while the system of state secrecy allows them to get away with it. The basic, underlying dishonesty is the selling of false promise that all politicians are required to do, in order to succeed and have a career under these arrangements.

It’s true that Europe is low on the list of what British voters consider important, but I wonder why that is. Could it be because of the lack of any serious coverage in the media? Most of the coverage we do get is so dry, that it almost seems calculated to put people off from investigating further. And don’t forget that a nice juicy expenses scandal is more likely to sell newspapers than any real in-depth examination of the issues surrounding our membership of the EU.